Pausefest is Australia’s biggest digital innovation festival which aims to support and showcase the best in creativity and technology from Australia and all over the world. This year, TAC is partnering with...

Pausefest is Australia’s biggest digital innovation festival which aims to support and showcase the best in creativity and technology from Australia and all over the world. This year, TAC is partnering with Pausefest to run a one-day Hackathon, inviting entrepreneurs, creative and technologists come together to dissect a road safety issue and find a solution.

Known as ‘Pause the Road Toll’, the event will call on participants to listen to a road safety briefing and brainstorm technology-based ideas that could contribute to a reduction in road crashes. This hackathon isn’t focused as much on coding within a defined period of time, instead focusing on ideas being the champion. The best ideas will leverage technology creatively to solve a road safety problem, while not officially required, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to build something if that better helps to explain your idea.

If you’re wondering about the size of the problem, in 2014, there were 9 bicycle fatalities, 44 pedestrian fatalities, 109 metro road fatalities, and 139 rural road fatalities. There were also more than 5,000 people taken to hospital as a result of road incidents and that’s just in Victoria. Basically too many people are being injured and killed on our roads and you can make a difference.

The prize pool for the event is a massive $75,000 worth of prizes, including $5,000 cash and a $70,000 incubation fund to help further develop their idea. This provides a massive incentive for ideas to translate into meaningful businesses. 70k will go a long way to converting an idea into a product over the weeks and months after the event.

For those technology minded who will be at PauseFest, this year the event will be powered by BlueTooth Low Energy Beacons. LE beacons will be strategically deployed throughout Federation Square, the festivals digital innovation hub, enabling the Pause Fest app (available for iOS and Android) to deliver personalised notifications and content to attendees based on their exact location. For example, attendees will be alerted to nearby keynote presentations or presented with supporting video content while they’re viewing an interactive installation. Pause Fest is Australia’s premier digital event and runs February 9-15 in Melbourne.

If you are interested in finding a solution to the road toll, keep an eye out on Pausefest.

For those technology minded who will be at PauseFest, this year the event will be powered by BlueTooth Low Energy Beacons. LE beacons will be strategically deployed throughout Federation Square, the festivals digital innovation hub, enabling the Pause Fest app (available for iOS and Android) to deliver personalised notifications and content to attendees based on their exact location. For example, attendees will be alerted to nearby keynote presentations or presented with supporting video content while they’re viewing an interactive installation. Pause Fest is Australia’s premier digital event and runs February 9-15 in Melbourne.

If you’re a creative person with ideas and the want to help solve the road toll, then head over to Eventbrite to register now.